Summary: Microsoft’s assault on GNU/Linux takes new routes as additional deals get signed to undercut it or to make it more expensive

THE previous post spoke about Microsoft’s racketeering [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] against Android [1, 2]. This is an aggressive action, it is not an interaction, no matter how Microsoft employees try to paint that.

Microsoft has gotten all sorts of witty ways of imposing software patents upon GNU/Linux. One way to get around Samba’s deal (patent concessions) in Europe appears to be a group of former Microsoft staff (called Likewise [1, 2, 3, 4]) which is bringing such patent fees into the latest Ubuntu GNU/Linux (or Kubuntu, the latest version of which I am trying at the moment, alongside PCLinuxOS 2010). But this isn’t the main subject of this post.

So, the deal with HTC isn’t the only partnership Microsoft entered into today. The Joomla! project has announced that Microsoft has signed the Joomla! Contributor Agreement, meaning the Redmond company is now a contributor to this GPL project. Microsoft code has already found its way into the upcoming Joomla! 1.6 release, and closer cooperation between Joomla! and Microsoft will follow.

The news was announced by Open Source Matters, Inc., the not-for-profit organisation behind Joomla!. The fruits of the closer cooperation between them are already finding their way into the code base; Joomla! will be better optimised for running on Microsoft’s IIS, while it will also be delivered through the Web Platform Installer.

This is not about Free software. It’s about connecting Joomla! to proprietary software, which would have a negative effect. Microsoft also hooks onto Moodle in the form of a plug-in [1, 2, 3] in order to advance its own proprietary software/services and it hooks onto Linux (with Novell’s help [1, 2, 3]) in order to promote Windows and Hyper-V, which are both proprietary. Suffice to say, there was a violation of the GPL in there, but this wasn’t the first such incident, either. Microsoft does not respect software licences [1, 2, 3, 4]. In any event, all that Microsoft ever contributes in terms of code are connectors to Microsoft databases, services, operating system, etc. It doesn’t actually add real function.

The XOOPS community was dealt a bad hand last week. The Dutch Court has rejected its suit against former project manager Herko Coomans and allowed Coomans to keep funds totally more than €15,000 held in a fund earmarked for the project.

This is hardly the first open source project to come into a bad way when early or original founders split due to disagreements. Gentoo had all manner of drama surrounding founder Daniel Robbins departure and attempted return. CentOS experienced issues with control of its funds and its domain last year. There’s the split from Mambo to Joomla, X.org from XFree86… most of which have their roots in poor governance issues.

Joomla! is a free/libre CMS software derived from Mambo and XOOPS is similar to that. Joomla! has a history of disagreements; It has been quite troublesome at the management level since the Mambo-server days. Already we are seeing some people who are very unhappy about Joomla!’s engagement with Microsoft. Regarding the news, Oiaohm wrote: “Think about it, Microsoft has to pay their staff to do the open source work. How are Microsoft going to get money back from it?”

By selling Windows and IIS, of course.

We have also just been sent a press release from Opsview, which is taking pride in Microsoft being involved using the headline “Global brands Ericsson, Microsoft, Allianz and Electronic Arts are turning to Opsview”. The press release itself hardly mentions Microsoft, but it does show that Microsoft is trying to ‘embrace’ its competition (open source included) in order to help itself. It’s an attack on Free software because proprietary software is promoted and it is especially an attack against GNU/Linux. Already, we are seeing coverage about Microsoft front groups like CompTIA speaking about “open source”. Well, there are many forms of “open source” and it’s not always free/libre. █

Well, as pointed out the other day, Microsoft was not passive and it verbally participated in Apple’s legal action against Android/Linux through HTC. This leads only to the suspicion that Apple and Microsoft may have spoken about their common enemy, Android/Linux.

Here is part of what Mary-Jo Foley wrote:

Apple sued HTC in early March for alleged IP infringement in the mobile phone space. Apple is claiming HTC is infringing 20 Apple patents related to the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware.

When Apple sued HTC, I asked Microsoft for comment, thinking Microsoft execs might be willing to come to HTC’s defense — to some extent, at least — given HTC sells Windows Mobile phones, as well as Android-based ones. But Microsoft officials wouldn’t provide a statement of any kind.

A statement I received from a Microsoft spokesperson makes a not-so-thinly-veiled reference to the Apple case (at least the way I read it):

“As you may be aware, many technology companies active in the growing smartphone space have been taking increasing steps to protect their inventions. As the two companies have a long history of technical and commercial collaboration, Microsoft views this agreement as an effective example of how industry leaders can reach commercially reasonable arrangements that address intellectual property concerns.”

Groklaw, set up in 2003 at the beginning of the SCO-Linux controversies, quickly became a go-to resource for tracking legal issues surrounding open source and the Web. “Groklaw is an attempt to get geeks and lawyers together, so they can help each other understand the other’s world, with the goal of ideally getting better court results based on technical realities,” Jones wrote me a few emails later, when there was “a lull in the action.” In theory, the case should come to a close soon, but Jones doesn’t have her hopes up about what’s next. “Next? Is there a next with SCO?” she asks. “They are like Night of the Living Dead as far as persistence is concerned.”

Installing MythTV can be as easy or as difficult as you want to make it. You could install a plain vanilla Linux distro and then install and configure MythTV with a lot of nasty terminal and command-line work, but if you fancy going down the easy route, it’s simple to install a Linux distro with MythTV built in to the installer.

Some of them will be based on distros we’re all familiar with (MythDora is based on Fedora/Red Hat, for example) and some will be a little more obscure. Ubuntu is one of the most widely used Linux distros, thanks in no small part to the user-friendly Windows/Mac feel of its front-end, and a Ubuntu installation with MythTV built-in is just too good an opportunity to pass up for this system.

It was during LinuxFest Northwest 2010, and it took place April 24 and 25.

Bill Wright, director of LinuxFest Northwest, said this was the 11th festival. The Bellingham Linux Users Group started the festival after the dot-com crash of the ’90s, when the software community was disjointed.

The goal was to create an event that would allow the Linux community to meet in person, he said.

A class action lawsuit has been filed against Sony Computer Entertainment America for the removal of the ‘Other OS’ feature from the PlayStation 3.

In March, Sony released firmware v3.21 that disabled the feature, disallowing users from installing the Linux operating system. The update was not mandatory; however those who chose not to download it were cut off from a number of other features, one of which included signing in to PlayStation Network.

Desktop

Ever wished you had two monitor setup for desktop so that you can improve your work efficiency.Or do you have a spare monitor at home which you are planning to sell? Wait, if you are running Linux and wish to have a multi-monitor setup(dual station) here is something interesting.Yes, i am talking about dual-station PC.

The Free version of software called Userful Multiplier can easily transform your dual-monitor linux PC into a dual-station PC.Meaning , if you already have a dual-monitor setup, you can now transform it into two different working stations with Useful Multiplier.

The software basically incorporates set of Linux software packages that can extend the X Window System to support upto 10 fully independent workstations using your single PC.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant of Sophos, has warned users that ‘hackers’ are exploiting a problem with McAfee’s anti-virus product that has caused hundreds of thousands of computers around the world to repeatedly reboot themselves.

I use ‘computers’ and they are not at risk because of McAfee’s whatever mistake. The reason is simple. I use GnuLinux on my ‘computers’. It is surprising that an expert like Graham could make such a huge mistake and overgeneralization by calling Windows running computers as computers. What about those computers which run on Gnu/Linux, BSD, Solaris and other such operating systems? These computers are not affected by this attack.

The second mistake is the usage of word hacker. Anyone who looks inside or makes changes to a systems is a hacker. If you tune the engine or your car, you are hacking your car. If you are tweaking the code of your computer to enhance performance you are a hacker. Calling all hackers criminals is, I think, shameful and outrageous.

Server

HPC Enterprise Edition is supported on x64-based clusters and currently supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, the CentOS clone of Red Hat, and another clone of Red Hat called Scientific Linux, which was created by CERN and FermiLab. No word on when Microsoft’s Windows 2008 HPC Server will be tossed into the mix.

As a consolidation server, the Power 560 Express provides the flexibility to use leading-edge AIX®, IBM i, Linux for Power and x86 Linux applications all on the same system. The Power 560 Express is designed with capabilities to deliver near-continuous application availability and allow more work to be processed with less operational disruption. PowerVM™ Editions offers comprehensive virtualization technologies designed to aggregate and manage resources while helping to simplify and optimize your IT infrastructure and reduce server sprawl.

Ballnux

StressLinux is a minimalistic Linux distribution aimed at stress-testing PCs under the best conditions. The latest release, StressLinux 0.5.111, has been launched bringing a number of improvements and updates over the previous versions. StressLinux is now based on openSUSE 11.2 and most core packages have been updated in 0.5.111.

Kernel Space

While early adopters of Ubuntu 10.04 “Lucid Lynx” have had access to the Catalyst 10.4 Linux driver for more than a month (in fact, two pre-releases) this afternoon AMD has officially released their April Linux driver.

Applications

System Administrators (SAs) have a tough job: Dealing with users and user accounts, security, patching, updates, upgrades, disk space, performance and other miscellaneous tasks often known as “other duties as assigned.” For some SAs, the day never ends. Despite the challenges, pitfalls and occasional irate user; system administration is a fulfilling job with intangible rewards like no other position in IT. To assist those weary SAs in their quest to conquer their Linux systems, I’ve devised this list of 12 native Linux system monitoring tools that are always at my fingertips.

Having covered Linux installation, running Windows XP in Ubuntu, Internet applications, and a handful of open source communications titles, Adam Overa is back with a comprehensive look at office apps for Windows users considering a switch to Linux.

If you have been reading Ghacks long enough you know I am partial to the Nano text based editor. For many users that editor (or one like it) is all they need. Because of the simplicity of the tools, why slow down your work with a GUI right? But for some, those GUI-less editors are a big turn off. It’s like they are the command line equivalent for text editing. Fortunately, for those, there are alternatives to the text-based editor. In the next few articles I will address this by introducing you to some of the better GUI-fied text editors. In this particular instance, I will introduce you to the GNOME default editor Gedit.

Proprietary

Rancocas, N.J.-based SQN Banking Systems, a leading provider of integrated fraud detection and process improvement products for the financial industry, has responded to client demand for open source enabled solutions by releasing Linux versions of its SENTRY: SigCheck™ and SENTRY: Inspect™ products.

Games

The Speed Dreams developers have announced the availability of version 1.4.0 of their open source 3D motor sport simulator. Speed Dreams is a fork of The Open Racing Car Simulator (TORCS) that includes a number of additional features, cars, tracks and AI opponents.

Following the success of the Live Hacking CD a Linux distribution packed with tools for ethical hacking and penetration testing, Dr. Ali Jahangiri decided to turn his attention to a smaller, leaner variant which fits on a Mini CD. This new version of the Live Hacking CD, dubbed the Live Hacking Mini CD, is small, faster and yet packed full of important ethical hacking tools.

Arch’s uptake has been surprising. The first time I installed Arch, I was rather unimpressed. The installation procedure seemed like a somewhat menu driven LFS installation, though faster because it used binaries. Since that first use, the installation has become better. It’s now somewhat similar to a Slackware installation, though the system-after-install is much more similar to a Debian installation or Ubuntu Minimal installation.

The oldest Linux distribution in existence is Slackware. It’s about time that I actually posted something about my favorite Linux distribution on this blog.

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I’m running Firefox in Slackware right now to write this article. I’ve been a Slacker for nearly four years now. I have other Linux distributions on my systems, but Slackware is my Linux now. Ubuntu was that cute girl at the bowling alley that I had the fling with way back when. Debian is an X who I keep in touch with. Arch is a sweetheart from the office. Sidux, CentOS, and those others are occasional flings, but Slackware is the girl I always come home to.

Have FUN with it!

New Releases

Macpup Opera 2.0 has been released and is now available for download. The frugal Linux distribution is based on the latest version of the popular Puppy Linux 4.3.1. It features the Enlightenment e17 window manager and the Opera web browser. Macpup aims to take Puppy Linux’s best features while bringing the look and feel of a Mac on Linux.

Mandrake/Mandriva Family

I have loaded PCLinuxOS 2010 onto my laptop and am testing it out. I used to use PCLinuxOS 2007 and due to a moribund development cycle had tried Ubuntu and Linux Mint. I like both of those distributions, but when the new version of PCLinuxOS came out I decided to give it a go and am not disappointed.

Red Hat Family

In a bid to simplify cloud computing for its large customers, Red Hat has announced that subscribers to Red Hat Enterprise Linux with premium support may move their instances between on-premises and in-the-cloud without modifying their license agreements.

Fedora

Debian Family

ThinkIO-Solo is a fanless embedded PC with an Intel Celeron M processor clocked at 1.06GHz, 1Gbyte RAM, up to 4Gbyte of soldered internal flash, and 512kbyte non-volatile memory. And the firm has released a companion Debian Linux desktop distribution.

ThinkIO-Solo and ThinkIO-Duo include an aluminium housing, Compact Flash socket for adding mass storage, standard PC interfaces, and field bus options including industrial Ethernet and a modular I/O interface option.

Ubuntu

Ubuntu is a Debian-based distribution of Linux. What does that mean? Buggered if I know. If you do, and you are feeling a powerful urge, already, to recommend a different version of Linux, then let me stop you right there. Is it easier to use? Is it prettier? No? Well, not interested. Move along.

The Ubuntu Manual Team are proud to announce the release of Getting Started with Ubuntu 10.04, a comprehensive beginner’s guide designed for the Ubuntu operating system. It is written under an open source license and is free for you to download, read, modify, and share. This manual will help you become familiar with everyday tasks such as surfing the web, listening to music, and scanning documents. With an emphasis on easy-to-follow instructions, it is suitable for all levels of experience.

I have written here in this blog of my brother and his conversion years ago from Windows to Linux and Apple. He has four computers, two of which have Linux, and two of which a have PowerPC based OS.X. One of the Linux computers recently suffered a motherboard failure, so he was down one.

As many of you will know, Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx is officially being released today – perhaps has already been released as I am writing this. Ubuntu 10.04 is an Long Term Support (LTS) version. With the Long Term Support (LTS) version you get 3 years support on Ubuntu Desktop, and 5 years on Ubuntu Server.

Let’s get a bird’s eye view of what is on offer in this latest avatar namely Ubuntu 10.04 a.k.a Lucid Lynx.

Variants

The EasyPeasy developers have announced the availability of a release candidate for version 1.6 of their Linux distribution aimed at netbooks. EasyPeasy was originally called “Ubuntu-eee” until Canonical intervened and has historically focussed on the ASUS Eee PC, however, a number of other netbook devices are also supported. The 1.6 release is based on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, code named “Lucid Lynx”, which is still under development.

Most NAS systems use Linux, and don’t use the Windows-friendly file systems FAT or NTFS. You stand a better chance of success attaching one to a Linux machine and running Linux file recovery software, but that may not work, either. Not all NAS systems use the standard Linux File System.

Nexenta is sticking to software putting a BASH/Linux CLI and of course management GUI on OpenSolaris to create NexentaStor which they then sell direct to users that want to roll their own unified storage systems and to OEMs like OnStor and PogoLinux who’ll sell fully packaged NAS appliances.

Also at ESC, Freescale will announce partnerships with embedded software houses to give its customers an alternative to Wind River’s technology, which is now owned by Intel. Although Wind River’s real time OS and Linux software is still being offered to all its clients, its new embedded software packages, to debut at ESC, are targeted initially at x86. Freescale is broadening its own ecosystem by working with Enea Systems, Green Hills Software and Mentor Graphics. It says it has chosen to create a strong group of independent software houses rather than acquiring its own technology, as Intel has, as well as Cavium, which purchased embedded Linux firm MontaVista.

Canal Digital is close to introducing a new Linux-based application that will bring in a new video-on-demand service for its satellite and cable customers. The initial plans were first revealed to Broadband TV News last November by Telenor Broadcast Holding CEO Christian Albech in an exclusive interview.

Phones

Japan’s largest mobile network service provider NTT Docomo has announced it will be teaming up with Sharp, Panasonic, Fujitsu and NEC to develop an all-new mobile phone operating system platform, compatible with Symbian and Linux OS.

Palm

HP is going to acquire smartphone maker Palm. In a conference call after the announcement, a high-level HP executive raised the possibility that his company might produce tablet computers running Palm’s webOS.

Of course, the good news for open source is that it doesn’t really matter whether HP’s move proves deeply wise or totally witless. Both Android and webOS have Linux at their heart, and both use additional free software (that found in the latest webOS includes ALSA and webkit elements.) In that sense, the lifeline that HP has thrown to Palm and hence webOS is good news: more resources will be expended on making key parts of open source better.

The PalmPilot is credited with popularizing the personal digital assistant, or PDA. And it was the device that established the basic form factor that later smartphones would use. After earlier attempts by Apple and others, Palm proved there was a market for a third category of portable computing device, something more than a cell phone but less than a laptop.

Nokia

Ari Jaaksi, Nokia’s VP for Maemo devices and MeeGo operations, spoke first, which he saw as an advantage because Intel’s Imad Sousou would be sure to correct anything he said “wrong”. The goal of the MeeGo project is to “provide industry with an open platform” for various kinds of devices. Both companies have been working on mobile distributions, which means that they “integrate the same components multiple times”, and that is “stupid”, Jaaksi said. That is one of the main ideas behind the merger.

Android

Apart from Android, these netbooks may also come with Moblin (Mobile Linux) OS on them. Dell will also introduce Looking Glass and Looking Glass Pro tablets based on Android OS with Bender. All these Android based products are projected to be launched by the third quarter of fiscal year 2011.

Sub-notebooks

Now that Windows is no longer the only operating system featured in netbooks, with Android and Linux steadily gaining ground, the time may have finally come for the ARM architecture to seriously consider making a foray into this market segment. ARM has been meaning to do so for quite a while now, but there has been little word on what effort, if any, is being put into this endeavor. The time of silence may have finally come to a close, however, now that a certain roadmap document from Samsung has been exposed.

Tablets

The system currently runs Debian Linux but the user claims that loading Ubuntu results in a slightly better battery life. Either way, the whole shebang with the extended battery, weighs around 800 grams. Unlike the Ipad, however, it has peripheral ports, including a working VGA output, which given the lack of screen is pretty important.

The word “open” — like “green” or “eco-conscious” — is one of the more amorphous concepts floating about the tech industry. Google touts openness while keeping its advertising and search algorithms secret. On the opposing side, Apple regularly faces heated criticism about the barriers it has erected to the app store.

Inside Contactless has taken a further step towards making its Open NFC technology available to all by making its source code and API documentation available to download from the Sourceforge.net open source website.

Jacques Honoré, TioLive Community Manager adds: “TioLive Grid is one more step towards Complete Freedom and Total Control by users over their private data. All customers’ data is kept on his own server. All server software is open source. There is no lock-in at all for TioLive users.”

He explained that the need for interoperability to support open source projects helped raise the demand for standard-based architectures and drive down cost.

The recession also raised the profile of cloud computing, which in turn has had a positive spillover effect on open source, he said. With companies looking to offload services to the cloud, companies are now adopting standards to ensure smooth data traffic between clouds, he said.

These developments have helped recast open source software as a means for enterprises to lower cost, he said.

Growing acceptance of open source software (OSS) is ushering in new interest from small and large developers in the Philippines, according to industry voices.

Although some early players have fallen by the wayside, there appears to be a steady upsurge of new companies capitalizing on the increasing OSS opportunity in the country and a boom in demand from foreign players.

Patrick Chan, Chief Technology Advisor for IDC Asia-Pacific’s emerging technologies practice group, posted that a more dedicated effort needs to be introduced on the part of institutions in order to move universities in the same direction.

We work in a very different environment now. Teams and networking are the heart of how we live. Sharing ideas and concepts which get developed through collaboration is a way of life. Open Source software is one of the most obvious examples; development through imitation and refinement for the good of all.

In that essay, Eric S. Raymond, a software programmer, heralded the rise of the Linux operating system and the bottom-up, open-source, we-the-people world that it reflected. He wrote that old-style software was “built like cathedrals, carefully crafted by individual wizards or small bands of mages working in splendid isolation.” Open-source pointed to a new way: “a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches,” as he put it, “out of which a coherent and stable system could seemingly emerge only by a succession of miracles.”

Mr. Raymond’s immediate subject was software, but his essay spoke for the age. It was a moment when democracy seemed on the march worldwide, when “the end of history” had been declared by Francis Fukuyama, when new tools called Web logs, or blogs, promised to empower the little guy. In that moment, as went the open-source technology, so went the world.

In developing countries where mobile phones are the most common device for Net access, mobile health (mHealth) applications are taking on a new importance. According to researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), open-source mobile platforms are equally as important to closing the healthcare divide.

[...]

As an open-source platform, users can download code online and install it in any Android handset and, eventually, on open-source Symbian mobile phones.

NXP and Trusted Logic, which develops software for NFC, have released an open-source API for Google’s Android mobile OS. The goal is to drive the development of compelling applications that take advantage of NFC, according to a statement.

Events

On Saturday, April 10th, I was in Austin Texas for the inaugural Texas Linux Fest (TXLF), a community-run FLOSS conference. The idea to stage the show arose last August during OSCON, picked up steam in the fall, and in the end a little under 400 people turned out — including speakers and volunteers — which most considered a successful number for a first year event.

Lucid Imagination, the commercial company for Apache Lucene and Solr open source search technologies, today announced details of the first conference in Europe dedicated to Lucene and Solr. The event will be held in Prague, Czech Republic, May 18th-21st.

The national coordinator of the festival, Eduardo Estevez, told Prensa Latina news agency that all national communities of users of open source platforms will participate in the event.

FLISOL is the largest advocacy event of free software in Latin America. It’s held since 2005 and since 2008 it adopted the fourth Saturday of April each year. Its main objective is to promote the use of free software, showing to the general public its philosophy, scope, progress and development.

Databases

If any open source application needs no introduction, it’s probably phpMyAdmin, the popular web interface to MySQL databases. MySQL is itself the most popular database system for web applications, and phpMyAdmin makes it easy to administer. phpMyAdmin lets database designers connect to MySQL servers, see all databases and tables they have permission to see, and perform actions on them, including creating and modifying table structure, inserting and updating data, import and export, and synchronizing data between servers.

Open Access/Content

Federal officials have quoted a questionable source in bids to kick foreigners out of Canada – Wikipedia. And judges are not amused.

“Wikipedia is an internet Encyclopedia which anyone with Internet access can edit,” wrote one exasperated Federal Court judge, criticizing Ottawa’s filings in a case to remove a family of Turkish asylum seekers.

“It is an open-source reference with no editorial control,” scoffed another judge, as he took federal agents to task for consulting Wikipedia before sending an immigrant back to Iran.

The new open government is one which offers information in easy-to-organize formats. That is, making schedules or meeting minutes that used to be buried at the bottom of a .PDF into accessible, searchable data.

I have often argued that the diversification of Linux has always been one of its big strengths: the richer the distribution ecosystem is, the richer the application set, and so forth.

Today we saw another example of why the decentralized nature of Linux is such a plus, when Microsoft revealed it believes Android infringes on its patents–a stick Microsoft was willing to use when it offered Taiwanese phone maker HTC the carrot of a yet another cross-licensing agreement.

[...]

I, for one, would be happy as a clam to see software patent portfolios get blown out of the water and let software companies compete in terms of the things that matter, rather than vague threats and insinuations.

On a recommendation of a friend I tried Android, specifically with the HTC Hero. I was very impressed, not only at how much I could do, but how quickly I could do it.

So now we see a world where Microsoft does not need to deploy a phone or an OS. They can simply wait and then play a patent card in the hope they can cream royalties of the top of someone else’s success (and I think its agreed that HTC/Android combo is a great product)

Theres a great message to innovators out there: Dont create anything too popular or functional as you may find a hungry pair of Microsoft eyes watching you…..

Microsoft’s chief bully is still spreading FUD by contacting even more publications, not just his drones at CNET (Ina Fried). Here is an example from Engadget

Update: Microsoft deputy general counsel of intellectual property Horacio Gutierrez just sent us a statement saying that the company’s been “talking to several device manufacturers to address our concerns relative to the Android mobile platform.” We’re taking that to mean the same as above: Microsoft isn’t too interested in suing any of its Windows Mobile / Windows Phone partners, so it’s trying to work out patent license deals with those companies in advance of any nastiness. It’s an interesting strategy: patents forbid anyone from making, using, or selling your invention, so Redmond can protect its partners while still leaving open the possibility of a lawsuit with Google itself down the line. In fact, we’d almost say it seems like Microsoft’s agreement with HTC is as much of a threat to Google as Apple’s lawsuit — Redmond’s basically saying you can’t sell an Android device without paying a license fee, and we’d bet those fees are real close to the Windows Phone 7 license fee. Clever, clever — we’ll see how this one plays out. Here’s Horacio’s full statement:

Microsoft has a decades-long record of investment in software platforms. As a result, we have built a significant patent portfolio in this field, and we have a responsibility to our customers, partners, and shareholders to ensure that competitors do not free ride on our innovations. We have also consistently taken a proactive approach to licensing to resolve IP infringement by other companies, and have been talking with several device manufacturers to address our concerns relative to the Android mobile platform.

Why would Microsoft take the initiative to ask publications to add more FUD like that? It’s very telling. They are trying to terrorise and thus to suppress adoption of Android by manufacturers. That’s a racket. We’ve seen Gutierrez doing this before.

“They are trying to terrorise and thus to suppress adoption of Android by manufacturers.”Let’s not forget that Apple is part of the attack on Android through HTC. Apple is quickly becoming more of a bully; we wrote about what it did to Gizmodo in posts such as:

We should not ignore Apple any longer as the enemy of our enemy. Apple is not our friend. Three years ago, I enlightened my brother about the merits of GNU/Linux as compared to MacOS. For schools, there is not much comparison. Apple’s products cost much more than free software and hardware. They do not really work any better either. Schools do not need software whose supplier has made a deal with the devil to be allowed to run on Apple’s hardware.

The sale of Apple’s iPhone and iPad in the US is under threat after the US International Trade Commission initiated a formal investigation into the company for allegedly infringing a patent covering multi-touch technology.

The ITC, which has the power to ban the import and sale of products, said it was responding to a request from the Taiwanese touchscreen maker Elan Microelectronics, which has a patent for technology that detects the simultaneous presence of two or more fingers on a touchscreen or touchpad.

“My message to the patent world is: Either get back to the doctrines of forces of nature or face the elimination of your system.”—Hartmut Pilch, Paraflows 06

Summary: Further evidence that those supporting software patents are front groups of giant corporations (seeking to tighten a monopoly) and patent lawyers who treat software patents as additional income

FORTUNATELY for the world, software patents are illegal in the vast majority of places; there are ‘tricks’ for sneaking software patents in, but having them tested in court is another thing altogether.

The New Zealand Information and Communications Technology Group (NZICT), whose members include Microsoft, IBM, Cisco and other multinationals as well as New Zealand software developers and exporters, says the committee got it wrong.

New Zealand should reject this type of imperialism with software patents. All these will do is stifle NZ developers and instead have them rely on binaries from abroad. Not only front groups of multinationals play this game though; as we pointed out several times before, patent lawyers too are thirsty for software patents because it’s just another type of patents that means more business to them (application, consultation, and litigation).

Meanwhile, software patents still appear to be going strong. Let’s take a look this month at a few software patents naming New England inventors.

They sure like saying “inventors”; they also say that software patents “protect” and promote “innovation” (although it is not clear how spending time filing and gardening paperwork contributes to innovation in software).

Ms Lin writes: “The report in Shenzhen-based Jing Bao quoted Fang Zhen, marketing manager of Crastal Technology (Shenzhen) Company, saying that some of the company’s patented products were found to be copied overseas and then imported back to China.”

Until it can stand tall and proclaim it is doing just that, and perhaps more importantly the end user can believe as much, in the same way that they believe Apple and the various flavours of Linux, I am afraid that I cannot actually think of a single reason why I shouldn’t blame Microsoft until the cows come home.

Between the patching, the re-re-reboots, the war against malware, and disasters like this one, wouldn’t the world be much further ahead to use GNU/Linux instead? If GNU/Linux lacks features that users of IT feel is important, they could spend their money on improving GNU/Linux instead of keeping that other OS alive, sometimes. All these billions could be put to better use.

Watch the author being trolled or possibly AstroTurfed by “amicus_curious”, who posts elsewhere under various names and acts as some sort of a PR/spin agent. Other new examples include the comments on this post (as well as many more).

For a long time M$ sold licences the same price everywhere but lately, in order to block un-licensed software and GNU/Linux, they have seriously cut prices in places like China. If SCOTUS decides that the first-sale rule applies to importations, M$ will face stiff competition by importations of its own products. M$ could respond by not selling in foreign markets, or cutting prices globally. Both would seriously impact the bottom line but would finally force the monopoly to compete on price everywhere and not just to stifle competition. It is silly to charge $100+ in the USA for stuff that sells for $3 in China. They could modify the EULA, perhaps (if this is not covered already), but on what basis would the BSA prosecute?

Contents

Kernel Space

The 100+ designs we received proved that the best ideas come from the community. We also know that the community knows best, so we’re asking you to vote for the very best design. We have six finalists, not five as we originally said we would have. Like I said: it was hard to choose!

The community favorite will win a trip to Boston to attend LinuxCon as well as the fame and fortune garnered by having their design displayed on Linux.com Store merchandise worn around the globe.

During the stabilization phase of the kernel development cycle, the -rc releases typically happen about once every week. 2.6.34-rc4 is a clear exception to that rule, coming nearly two weeks after the preceding -rc3 release. The holdup in this case was a nasty regression which occupied a number of kernel developers nearly full time for days. The hunt for this bug is a classic story of what can happen when the code gets too complex.

Graphics Stack

Back in March we talked about the possible X.Org projects this year during Google’s Summer of Code, for which X.Org is a veteran participant (in the past items like the ATI R300 Gallium3D driver and generic GPU video decoding have been tackled), but the list of accepted projects for this summer have now been announced. Gallium3D H.264 video decoding, an OpenGL 3.2 state tracker, and porting of the DRM code to GNU/Hurd were among the talked about possibilities, but none of those will be addressed as part of GSoC 2010.

Applications

At some point, nearly unnoticed, Midori 0.2.4 slipped through to repositories everywhere. I know what you’re thinking, “Who cares about a 6 week old partial release? Lucid Lynx comes out in less than two days!” Well, I think Midori ought to find a home on your new install.

As a file manager, Gnome Commander has the look and feel of early workhorses like Norton Commander and Midnight Commander. Among its many talents, Gnome Commander is a life-saver when it comes to synchronizing files. Something I wish were available in more apps I use is the ability to do advanced renaming of files, and GC does this with support for various types of meta-data.

Desktop Environments

South Africa celebrated Freedom Day, Tuesday 27th April– a national holiday to commemorate the first democratic election. So I spent the day attempting to squeeze freedom out of my aging 1.8ghz PC with 1Gb Ram.

The solution to achieving the kind of brute-force computing and speed I need in order to have a faster Web experience was to use a different window manager. Creating an Openbox session which free’s up RAM allows my heaveyweight Firefox browser to access more computer resources and hence greater freedom. Less caching means the browser can live totally in RAM, which is what the programme was designed to do.

Today I want to talk about a distro that is not among the most popular ones, but may be of interest for some with certain specific needs: MacPup Opera, which just released its 2.0 version.

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If you have been using Linux for some time and have a clear understanding of how you will benefit from what MacPup Opera has to offer, then you will likely get a kick out of it. If you simply want to find out more about it or the Enlightenment window manager, by all means give it a go, you only have one CD-R to lose.

I personally believe there are many areas in which MacPup Opera 2.0 can be an extremely handy distro, just understand this is probably not best suited for main desktop use.

Red Hat Family

Red Hat is strengthening its position in the cloud computing market by augmenting its support for Amazon EC2 users. Red Hat Cloud Access will make it possible for the company’s customers to transfer their Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) subscriptions between their own self-hosted infrastructure and Amazon’s elastic cloud.

Moving enterprise IT software to the cloud isn’t just a technology issue, it’s software support entitlement issue as well.

Linux vendor Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) today is unveiling a new program dubbed Red Hat Cloud Access through which current Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscribers can leverage their existing support subscriptions for cloud deployments.

Debian Family

Ubuntu

Thursday is D-Day – meaning Download Day – for the new Ubuntu 10.04 Long Term Support release from commercial Linux distributor Canonical. And this release is shaping up to be a watershed event for the upstart distro.

That’s true not only on the desktop and on the server, but among the software development community that wants to code applications and make money.

Canonical has high hopes for its latest release: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Long Term Support). Also known as Lucid Lynx, this new version is the one that, from many indications, the company hopes will take Ubuntu from being a fan favorite to a commercial success. Based on my first look at the release candidate, Canonical’s hopes may be realized.

It’s official: Ubuntu 10.04 Long Term Support arrives April 29, and this particular blogger was privy to the press conference about it. Canonical Chairman Mark Shuttleworth and CEO Jane Silber discussed the plans and progress of new operating system, and then fielded some Q and A. The key news: More than 80 ISVs are supporting Ubuntu. But here’s what it means for the desktop users and Canonical as a whole…

Ubuntu 10.04 is now certified on over 50 servers and laptops, and OEM support is taking off worldwide. Dell has embraced Ubuntu Enterprise Clouds, and Lenovo has just launched Ubuntu machines into China.

Canonical expressed their plans to achieve a ten-second boot time in June of last year for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, with their reference system being a Dell Mini 9 netbook. In February, we last checked on Ubuntu’s boot performance and found it close, but not quite there yet, but did they end up hitting this goal for the final release of the Lucid Lynx? Well, from our tests, not quite. We tested out a near-final version of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on three netbooks — including a Dell Mini 9 — and the boot speed is not quite in the single digits.

Phones

Nokia

#1 Firefox – Easily my favorite way to surf the web, on the N900 or otherwise. If you want more of my thoughts on this one check out my Firefox Mobile Review.

#2 fMMS – This application steps up to fill one of the biggest mess-ups Nokia made when they released the N900: lack of MMS support. fMMS currently supports sending pictures and receiving all types of media messages. Since I discovered this wonderful application I no longer have to hear my friends say “your phone does all that, but can’t get a picture message?”

Android

And according to Google VP Andy Rubin, the more the search giant blankets the industry with competing Android-droid based mobile handsets, the more likely Google is to hit its expected value of market dominance over Apple’s iPhone.

Tablets

Shenzhen-based Eken announced a seven-inch tablet computer that runs either Android or Windows CE 6.0. The M001 has a 600MHz ARM-based processor, 128MB of RAM and 2GB of flash storage, an SD slot, stereo speakers, and 802.11b/g wireless networking, the company says.

TABLET UPSTART Fusion Garage has announced the availability of its Joojoo tablet in the UK, beating the cappuccino firm’s delayed Ipad launch outside the US.

The firm claims that the 12.1-inch tablet is the world’s largest capacitive touchscreen device. Beneath the screen is an Intel 1.6GHz Atom processor and an Nvidia ION chipset, making the Joojoo fairly spritely. Like Apple’s Ipad, there is no keyboard and the battery is not removable, however the similarities end there.

You may notice that the Blu-ray image is only just over 2GB. This is intentional; we have encoded all the content on the disk at appropriate bitrates to be playable from an ordinary 4.7GB DVD. This should make it far easier to burn a copy of the Blu-ray, since Blu-ray burners and writable media are still relatively rare. Most Blu-ray players will treat a DVD containing Blu-ray data as a normal Blu-ray disc. A few, such as the Playstation 3, will not, but you can still play it as a data disc.

Events

It’s only a few more days until Penguicon, North America’s finest science fiction and open source software convention. I’m not only psyched to be attending, but I’m flattered beyond words to be one of this year’s Guests of Honor. Penguicon runs from April 30 to May 2 at the Marriott in Troy, MI.

Mozilla

I just got back from 10 days abroad and noticed my Firefox at home was acting oddly. My preferred way to go to many websites is simply to type their name into the location bar, and then let Google’s “I’m feeling lucky” feature take me to the actual site. I realize this might not be the most conventional way to do it (sure, I could have bookmarks etc.), but it’s they way I like to do it.. I also use KDE’s Alt-F2 launcher to start programs.

Over the last few months, we’ve made some great progress on bringing Firefox to Android. Michael Wu, Brad Lassey, Alex Pakhotin and I have been focusing on getting a build ready that’s usable by a broader set of people, and we’re now ready to get that build out there.

Facebook wants to be the entry-point to the Web, but it’s important to remember that Facebook itself is on the Web, and accessed through a Web browser. This means that in some sense the browser exists at a lower level than Facebook, and therefore has the opportunity to pre-empt some of its functions – notably, in terms of handling the key issue of identity.

Oracle

Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) will soon make it tougher to get paid support for its open source Lustre clustered file system.

According to a recent presentation by Peter Bojanic, director of Oracle’s Lustre Group, Lustre 1.8 and 2.0, which was just released as a beta, will remain open source and licensed under GPL 2.0. But beginning with the full release of Lustre 2.0, paid support will be limited to those purchasing Lustre bundled with Oracle hardware, and the company won’t provide an upgrade path for 1.8 users who desire support. That means that Lustre 2.0 users who want paid support will need to replace their hardware.

Health

In August 2007, Florida hospital hired a “rock star” physician. With this hire, a series of events was triggered that would end up with Drupal (news, site) hosting over 125 department and team intranet sites, over 40 externally-facing marketing sites and a growing number of other applications. Want to know more? Read on.

Is any of this insurmountable? Certainly not, and there are a number of areas where the Open Source community can play a valuable roll. But on reviewing the challenges, I also see why there is not more involvement. Many of the issues require specialized knowledge of a number of aspects of what is today a black box to many. There are few defined requirements and even fewer good directions. But then, is that not what is the best about the Open Source community? We see a problem and try to solve it. Perhaps the right problem has not been presented. Or maybe it is such a niche that I have not seen the strides we have made. But as the big guns of the consulting world are looking at solving this, I hope they will leverage the Open Source model, as well as solutions used elsewhere. And perhaps, just perhaps, a year-five year-from now, we will be talking about Open Source eHealth software the same way we talk about network management software or VoIP software.

Open Access/Content

When Arthur Dent, of The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, searched for the notice that his house was to be demolished to make way for a new bypass, he eventually found it on the bottom of a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying, ‘Beware of the Leopard.’

Governments, large and small, generate vast amounts of information. Finding the relevant piece of information in a timely fashion is a challenge, and that’s assuming that the government has decided to share it with the public at all.

Over the past year, Vancouver’s city government has launched a program to make large amounts of information to the public. These data sets, posted online at data.vancouver.ca, include garbage pickup schedules, drinking fountains and motorcycle parking, in a wide variety of formats

American college students are hooked on cellphones, social media and the Internet and showing symptoms similar to drug and alcohol addictions, according to a new study.

Researchers at the University of Maryland who asked 200 students to give up all media for one full day found that after 24 hours many showed signs of withdrawal, craving and anxiety along with an inability to function well without their media and social links.

Finance

In the last few weeks, a new player entered the financial reform fray with a $1.6 million ad buy, a respected economist on board, a blitz of opinion columns on left-leaning websites, and a message, cooked right into the group’s name — Stop Too Big To Fail — that liberals could love.

But as TPMmuckraker has looked into the group, every indication is that Stop Too Big To Fail is an astroturf operation funded by corporate interests to give the appearance of grassroots opposition to reform.

A corporate front group with the populist-sounding name “Stop Too Big To Fail” (STBTF) is running a $1.6 million TV advertising campaign designed to appeal to liberal/progressives and get them to advocate against financial reform legislation currently under consideration in Congress. The ads target Senate Democrats in three states and ask viewers to tell their senators to “vote against this ‘phony financial reform’ ” and “support real reform, stop ‘too big to fail.’ ” STBTF has also put out a blitz of opinion columns on left-leaning Web sites.

The great test for the financial services reform bill, if and when it ever gets debated in the Senate, will be what it does to rein in Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street institution famously described by Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi as “a vampire squid jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”

“More and more leverage in the system. The whole building is about to collapse anytime now! Only potential survivor, the fabulous Fab[rice Tourre] standing in the middle of all these complex, highly leveraged, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstrosities!!!”

Tourre will be testifying with Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who recently shoved the Fab off a cliff by releasing embarrassing personal emails from his Goldman account. Let’s hope the Fab gets a chance to return the favor at tomorrow’s hearing.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

Silencing supporters of single-payer, or Medicare for All, is a media staple, but PBS’s Frontline found a new way to do that on the April 13 special Obama’s Deal–by selectively editing an interview with a single-payer advocate and footage of single-payer protesters to make them appear to be activists for a public option instead.

The Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission struck down laws that banned corporations from using their own money to support or oppose candidates for public office. In overturning previously established precedents, the Supreme Court’s decision means that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.

Jessie Daniels, an Associate Professor in the Urban Public Health program at Hunter College, New York, has identified a phenomenon she calls “cloaked Web sites,” or sites published by individuals or groups who deliberately conceal their authorship to disguise a hidden political agenda.

A recent PRWatch blog discussed how corporations are increasingly turning to cause marketing to get around people’s ability to tune out their daily deluge of advertising. Cause marketing, or “affinity marketing,” is a sophisticated PR strategy in which a corporation allies itself with a cause that evokes strong emotions in targeted consumers, like curing cancer, alleviating poverty, feeding the hungry, helping the environment or saving helpless animals.

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

A: One of the biggest threats to online freedom is an overuse of surveillance, both by governments and businesses. Governments are using technology to monitor phone calls, e-mails, Internet activity, text messaging and other communications of their citizens. In the United States, the government has been doing a tremendous amount of this without following the basic safeguards designed to protect us that have been built into our laws, such as getting warrants. If the government skips that step – if there is no judicial oversight – then it is easy for the government to abuse its power.

Three Democratic senators today asked the Federal Trade Commission to take a look at Facebook’s controversial new information sharing policies, arguing that the massively popular social network overstepped its bounds when it began sharing user data with other websites.

Intellectual Monopolies

A music-industry speaker at an American Chamber of Commerce event in Stockholm waxed enthusiastic about child porn, because it serves as the perfect excuse for network censorship, and once you’ve got a child-porn filter, you can censor anything:

“Child pornography is great,” the speaker at the podium declared enthusiastically. “It is great because politicians understand child pornography. By playing that card, we can get them to act, and start blocking sites. And once they have done that, we can get them to start blocking file sharing sites”.

Firstly let me stress that there a lot of really good reasons to secure your network, not least of which are privacy of your machines and data, viruses spreading, and even costs (you may pay for usage of your internet!). If you have fire-walling facilities allowing you to run a DMZ (de-militarized zone) for public wifi that is safer.

However, the Digital Economy Act has just turned things on their head slightly. It actually encourages you to run an open wifi.